Album Review: Angels & Airwaves

21:30 September 09, 2015
By: Kevin Quinet

…Of Nightmares EP
To the Stars 

Tom DeLonge, original founder of Blink-182, started a side band/project, Angels & Airwaves, with very ambitious aspirations, stating that their first album, We Don't Need To Whisper, would be the best album anybody has heard in the past 20 years. Though Mr. DeLonge is outspoken and very "out there" with his ideas, ambitions, and even his many conspiracy theories, you cannot doubt his inventiveness, powerful song writing, and great production. Throughout the five albums “AvA” has put out, you can listen to each epic song and it makes even the most horrendous drives in your car feel like you’re taking an epic tour through space.

Fast forward to that fifth studio album, The Dream Walker, which now only includes Nine Inch Nail's amazing drummer llan Rubin (drums, percussion, bass guitar, synths, backing vocals) and Tom DeLonge. The Dream Walker was the start of DeLonge's other side project about a fictional character, Poet Anderson.  The album was the first tie-in with this new project, including a short film and graphic novel. …Of Nightmares is only four tracks (more or less typical of an EP), totaling 18 minutes, but is the jumping-off point of his new book based on this character, Poet Anderson, within the EP. DeLonge is collaborating with best-selling author Suzanne Young on this book, which is the first in a planned trilogy, Poet Anderson…Of Nightmares on October 6th.

The first track on the album, "Home" sounds like something out of the Trent Reznor playbook. It includes a lot of synth, reverb, and echoing, and feels like the beginning of a story, which is what it is intended to be. It was in fact inspired by an art installation DeLonge saw online, and the hypnotic music accompanying it was sort of an interpretation. "Into The Night" (the closest thing to a single on the EP) is, according to an interview with DeLonge, "about walking the person you love through a nightmare", and you can hear it. …Of Nightmares is way too short, but it’s a good brief listen and will make more sense when the movie and book come out.  The project is off to a great start and I love where it is going.

 

 

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